'Scrambled?' Trask wasn't that easily satisfied.
'As per SOPs, yes,' said the other.
At which Trask thanked the ASI men (Australian Special Intelligence), who headed back to the airstrip to connect with incoming Chopper Two's military commanders and three more members of Branch ground staff. Once they were in, and until the slower back-up squads of Australian SAS types had arrived and taken up their tactical locations, the advance party was on its own…
In fact, it took the technicians half an hour to complete their hook-up. Meanwhile an uncharacteristically subdued Liz had brewed a pot of Earl Grey for Trask and herself, coffee for Jake and the others. Goodly had taken his coffee through into ops. Trask was enjoying his tea in one of the living rooms while poring over a small-scale map of the Queensland/New South Wales border areas. It was somewhere there, in the vicinity of the border, that the locator Chung had detected mindsmog, probably due to the mental activity of a master vampire, Wamphyri! Probably, but not definitely, not with one hundred per cent certainty; the Branch had long since discovered psychic 'hotspots' where a proliferation of lesser, human ESP talents could produce the same result. It had been David Chung's 'hunch', however, that this time it was the real thing, which the synchronous 'coincidence' of vampire lieutenant Bruce Trennier's death had seemed to confirm.
Jake took his coffee over to where Trask worked, watched him use a red highlighter to plot a dotted line along the border from Stanthorpe to Coolangatta, then circle the whole area in a ring of pale red ink. As Trask looked up from what he was doing, Jake lifted an enquiring eyebrow.
'If our target is here/ Trask explained, 'and if he has established himself, then he's somewhere inside this ring. Personally, I fancy he is. I've known David Chung for a long time and he doesn't make too many mistakes. It was Chung who discovered Trennier. Once we had an approximate location, we checked with the local police and picked up on a handful of disappearances — Trennier's recruits, those creatures we killed at the Old Mine gas station. That one was fairly easy; in a region as thinly populated as the Gibson Desert, people are wont to take notice when their kith and kin cease to exist! But here in the east, on the coastal strip…' He paused, glanced again at the map, shook his head.
'Densely populated,' Jake nodded. 'And that circle you've drawn covers, what — maybe five, six thousand square miles?'
'Closer to eight,' Trask corrected him glumly. 'And folks disappear around here every other half-hour, about the same as they do in similar areas of population all over the world.'
Lardis Lidesci had been talking to Liz. Now he came over, put a gnarled finger on the map and growled, 'These?' 'Mountains,' Trask answered.
'Huh!' Lardis grunted. 'Thought so. And the border follows the mountains, right?'
'In part,' Trask nodded. 'A natural boundary, yes.'
'An wnnatural boundary, in Sunside/Starsidef Lardis said. 'But there again, the Barrier Mountains are different entirely, and they never knew sunlight such as these mountains have seen. But beggars, and even the Wamphyri, can't be choosers. Not in a world like this. So there you are. And now maybe you can narrow it down.'
Concentrating on the map, Trask was only half-listening to what Lardis was saying. But in another moment he looked up from where he sat at the table. 'Eh?'
'Mountains,' Lardis said. 1 understand 'em. And so do the Wamphyri. If this one's a Lord, where do you think he'll be?'
'Where do I think—?' Trask frowned, looked again at the map, then came erect and snapped his fingers.
'In the mountains, aye,' Lardis anticipated him, scowling in his fashion. 'In his aerie, of course. That's a logical con— er, conclusion? — wouldn't you say? And here's another: if it is one of them, it isn't Szwart. What, in all this heat and light? No way — not a chance. It's too much for me, let alone for Lord Szwart. Huh! Darkness himself, that one!'
And: 'Damn! You're probably right!' Trask husked.
At which point lan Goodly returned from the ops room. 'Up and running,' he said. 'And Ben, David Chung's on-screen, wanting to speak to you…'
'I have some hot-off-the-press news for you,' Chung told Trask as he seated himself within the screen's viewing arc.
'Big deal,' Trask answered wearily, with a touch of sarcasm but no real malice. 'Just about any news fits that description! We've been busy, air-mobile, and only just got settled in here. So, what's going down in your neck of the woods that's such hot stuff?'
Chung shrugged. 'In my neck of the woods? Not a lot. But in yours: an opportunity to speak to an old pal of ours, maybe, if that's of any interest?' And then, more seriously: 'It's Gustav Turchin. He's going to be there at the Earth Year Conference in Brisbane. The time in the City is now—' he glanced off-screen '—a little after eight a.m. But just an hour ago Turchin himself was on-screen, unscrambled, from Moscow. He was interested to know if you'd be attending the conference. He was very careful, oh-so-polite, and diplomatic as usual, but John Grieve was doing Duty Officer and read him like a book. Premier Turchin is eager to see you, Ben. It was a last-minute call, probably monitored, before he boarded an Aeroflot VTOL Atmozkim to Brisbane. And John says Turchin stressed the fact that he would be accompanied by 'several members of his staff…'
'That's very interesting,' Trask answered. 'His bodyguards will be special police, KGB lookalikes — watchdogs for the real leaders, all the military types like Mikhail Suvorov — who will be making sure he doesn't step out of line. So maybe Turchin is on his way out, his days of power at an end. But of course I'll see him. I have a few questions for him, and while he still has some pull there's a favour I need to ask of him…' Trask glanced at Jake, perhaps musingly, then turned back to the screen.
'So thanks for the information, David,' he continued, 'and you can be sure I'll act on it. But now I'd like you to tell me something about our main problem. How is the search going? Have you picked up anything new to corroborate your original lead?'
Chung pulled a wry face. 'There's something there, I would swear to that. But it's too distant, too shielded, literally on the other side of the world! Your side of the world, Ben. Which is where I have to be if you want any kind of accuracy. I mean, how can I be expected to locate someone or something through eight thousand miles of solid rock and white-hot magma?' 'You want in on this?' Trask's face was a blank. 'Absolutely!'
'And you wouldn't be playing on your talent simply so you can come swarming around out here?'
Chung's face showed his confusion. For the truth was that he would dearly love to go 'swarming around' in Australia with his E-Branch colleagues — and if he denied it Trask would know he was lying! So after letting his face work its way through a number of mutually contradictory expressions, finally he said, 'But isn't that the wrong question? What you should have asked is, do I think I'll be better placed to find what we're searching for if I'm out there with you?… To which I would have to answer, yes.'
At which Trask's stony expression broke and he grinned. 'I know,' he said. 'I'm good at asking awkward questions, right?'
'Too true!' Chung rubbed his chin and looked hurt — until a moment later, when Trask said:
'Okay, so how soon can you be out here? The fact is you'll come in useful apprising Premier Turchin first- hand of all that you've discovered about the Russian navy's illegal pollution of the world's oceans… and in Earth Year at that! Which in turn will afford me a little more leverage on what I would like from him. That's if leverage is required, which I doubt. For, in fact, Gustav Turchin isn't a bad sort of bloke.'
Watching Chung's face come alive with anticipation on the wall screen, Jake thought: Synchronicity again! Like some kind of weird word~association. E-Branch: Gustav Turchin: the down-at-heel Russian military's systematic pollution of the oceans: the Earth Year eco~summit. And all of it coming together right here and now, in Brisbane — along with a whole hunch of other shit, possihly.
And meanwhile, with a smile as broad as his face, the locator was saying, 'I, er, already mentioned the possibility that I mightbe needed to John Grieve. He's happy to take over here, and there'll be no shortage of staff in support. So… when is the next flight out?'
Trask nodded, knowingly. 'I'm sure you'll be able to check that out for yourself,' he said. 'Er, if you haven't already.'
And Chung laughed and said, 'I have an hour and forty minutes to make Heathrow!'
'I thought so,' Trask said. 'Very well, lan Goodly can get his head down now and pick you up in the wee small
